“I tried to play baseball,” he said Tuesday in the Carrier Dome, “but it was so boring. You gotta be standing there, waiting for something to happen. I didn’t like that. I like to be moving all the time.”

Suero, the Albany Great Danes basketball guard, hails from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, the island nation that contributes countless major leaguers on the baseball diamond. But Suero, a junior college transfer, clearly made the right career choice.

Against the Orange, he scored a game-high 31 points. That’s the most points an opposing player has dropped on SU in the Carrier Dome since Cornell’s Ryan Wittman scored 33 in 2008. SU coach Jim Boeheim called Suero “a tough kid.”

He went to the free throw line 12 times and converted 11 of those opportunities. In a loss to Pittsburgh Nov. 11, Suero attempted 16 free throws.

“I don’t know,” he laughed. “I just get to the basket and they gotta foul me. I can go through players. And they can’t stop me. They gotta foul me.”

“He’s really good. A slasher,” SU forward Kris Joseph said. “We knew what he was capable of and he came out (tonight) and did the same thing. Whether we were in a man or a zone, he found a spot. And he got to the free throw line a lot.”

About those free throws – The Great Danes outscored the Orange 26-12 from the free throw line. Albany attemped 14 more free throws than SU and converted 79 percent at the line.

Great Danes coach Will Brown said that was by design. When Albany lost big at Pittsburgh (89-56), the Danes took 13 more free throws than the Panthers.

“Too many guys are concerned with avoiding Syracuse’s shot-blockers,” Brown said. “I told our guys that they don’t take charges and that we need to go right at them. Just take the ball strong. If they block it, we get back on defense. I think the guys who try to avoid the blocked shots and do all the double-pumps and all that, that’s what Syracuse wants. That’s when they block it and make transition from defense to offense very well.”

Joseph had not heard Brown’s analysis. But the SU forward would have appreciated Brown’s thoughts.

“Instead of maybe stepping in and taking a charge,” Joseph said, “we were reaching and trying to get the ball. … We can’t let that happen. We gotta play honest defense.”